US Army's heavy ground robot reaches full-rate production

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Army's heavy common ground robot has reached full-rate production, less than a year after FLIR won the contract to deliver the system, FLIR's vice president in charge of unmanned ground systems told Defense News in an interview this month. "We've progressed with the U.S. Army through all the milestones on the program and are now at full-rate production on the program. We're building systems, we're delivering them, there are systems out at Fort Leonard Wood right now going through training with troops and there are more systems in the pipeline to be delivered all the way through next year and further," Tom Frost said. "I think what's remarkable is how quickly the Army was able to run a program to find a very capable, large [explosive ordnance disposal] robot and then get it out to troops as quickly as they did," he added. The service award FLIR an Other Transaction Authority type contract in November 2019 to provide its Kobra robot to serve as its Common Robotic System-Heavy -- or CRS-H.